About the Cause
Dubai Cares’ programs are designed to reduce, if not remove, the greatest obstacles that prevent children and young people in developing countries from attaining quality education. With each intervention, Dubai Cares evaluates the need for assistance across two key areas:
Access to Education which allows Dubai Cares to improve children’s health and learning environment, increase education enrollment and attainment, increase access to education, reduce absenteeism, increase gender parity and increase promotion rates.
Quality of Education which enables early learning, enhances educational attainment and school progression, improves literacy and numeracy skills among children, enables teachers to access teacher training resulting in better learning outcomes, reduce dropout rates and increase primary school attainment.
Dubai Cares is a long-term advocate of safeguarding children and young people’s right to education and is currently playing a global advocacy role in spreading the knowledge about the importance of providing education to the unprivileged children.
We also champion education through research - There is an overwhelming lack of evidence as to what works to promote children’s learning in crisis-affected contexts. Research plays a pivotal role in tackling this issue.
My Story
Udayan Care launched the Udayan Shalini Fellowships (USF) in 2002 in Delhi with 72 girls. Since its inception, USF has supported over 16,000 girl beneficiaries from financially constrained backgrounds. Today, USF has its presence in 38 cities of India. Some of the unique features of USF are mentoring, life skills, and employability workshops, besides financial educational support to create a force of sensitive, trained and enlightened citizens. To encourage social awareness and responsibility, Shalinis fulfill 50 hours of mandatory social work. Today, many of our Shalinis (Dignified, Empowered Women), are pursuing fields like Engineering, Medical Studies, Chartered Accountancy, Company Secretary ship, Vocational Training, Nursing, and Computer Science, among others. The USF Program is not limited to impacting the girls alone; it affects their communities and families also, through constant interaction with them, to promote women’s education and empowerment. Our girls become role models for their communities, and the perceptions of communities and families about gender issues, women’s education and empowerment start changing.